The PGA Tour had a fun playoff finish today that no one could watch live

Golf is an outdoor game, which means it’s sometimes at the mercy of the elements. Or more accurately it always is, but sometimes it’s a bigger deal than other times. Today was one of those times, as severe storms were predicted across the Southeast, including the venue for this week’s PGA Tour event, the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town, on Hilton Head.

The threat of that weather prompted the event to move up tee times this morning in an effort to finish ahead of the severe weather, which is an admirably flexible move. No one wants to stay until Monday, and if you’ve ever been at a golf course for a massive storm, you know there’s really no place for people to take shelter. With that in mind, the earlier adjustment made sense.

Unless you’re CBS, which decided to stick with their original coverage window and air the event delayed. That also makes some sense, of course. But what doesn’t make sense was making the live broadcast unavailable as it was happening. That’s exactly what happened, though:

It’s one thing to not want to disrupt your previous plans to air the event at 3 PM Eastern. But this led to Golf Channel (which works with whichever network has the weekend coverage) airing the delayed coverage when they came on at 1, even though the tournament was wrapping up during that window. To not utilize an online stream with live coverage, or even CBS Sports Network, is an odd choice.

Yes, there are probably a million reasons why that would be more complex than it seems. Broadcasting golf is very hard as it is. But when you sign up to televise a sport, you should be signing up to do everything possible to deliver the event live, because the drama of the unfolding story is the entire point of broadcasting sports. CBS is the worst offender when it comes to this, attempting to fit the actual golf into a prepackaged narrative.

Why even sign up to televise golf if you clearly don’t want to do it well?

Those surveyed by Deloitte averaged three streaming service subscriptions, but many weren't thrilled with the numbers of services they had to subscribe to get what they want. That's worth noting for sports, considering the fragmentation in the sports streaming landscape.

The management services provider for two West Virginia sports books and the state's online betting app is in a dispute with a third-party technology vendor, which means those books won't be able to offer early-round March Madness betting.

Those surveyed by Deloitte averaged three streaming service subscriptions, but many weren't thrilled with the numbers of services they had to subscribe to get what they want. That's worth noting for sports, considering the fragmentation in the sports streaming landscape.

The management services provider for two West Virginia sports books and the state's online betting app is in a dispute with a third-party technology vendor, which means those books won't be able to offer early-round March Madness betting.